The present invention is directed to a towel dispensing machine that preferably dispenses wet towels and a method for dispensing such towels.
Up until now, places such as restaurants, fast food locations, bars, etc. provided their patrons with dry paper or cloth napkins. Such napkins do not work very effectively for cleaning hands and faces before or after eating. Some places such as first class service on an airplane provide wet, hot cloth towels but do not have an efficient or economical way for providing such hot towels to the rest of the passengers on the airplane. Such towels, also, have to be washed, rolled and heated. Further, such towels are not disposable, cannot be customized, are not ready on demand and are costly. The airlines are also extremely limited in the number of towels that can be provided to such patrons. Alternatively, some places such as rib joints provide wash and dry towels in little packages. Such packages, however, cannot provide hot towels but instead the wipes are cold. Further, such packages are costly as one is usually not enough per customer. The packages also often become open, lose their wetness and need to be thrown out. In addition, a necessary supply of such packages uses a lot of space.
The present invention is intended to overcome these deficiencies.
The present invention is directed to a towel dispensing machine. More particularly, the present invention is preferably directed to a machine for dispensing wet, preferably hot, towels. Such towels can be used, for example, in restaurants, bars, hotels, gyms, locker rooms, exercise rooms, air planes, hospitals, country clubs, break rooms, pool areas, rest rooms, fast food locations, homes or anywhere a person wants to clean their hands or face or even to use the towels for other types of cleaning.
In a preferred embodiment, the machine includes a cutting mechanism for cutting the towels to the size desired by the owner of the machine and a liquid dispensing device for wetting the towels. In a further embodiment, the machine includes either a roll for uncut towels on a disposable core or a core in which a roll of towels can be placed. In addition, the liquid dispensing device can include a container of liquid. In operation of an example embodiment of this invention, a person desiring a towel, requests a towel by pushing a button or activating the automatic dispenser, and the machine cuts a towel to the desired length, wets the towel and outputs it to the person. In a further embodiment, the machine rolls the towel before outputting it. In still a further embodiment, the towels are wetted with a hot liquid.
The person receiving the towel can then use the towel to clean his hands or face (or anything the person desires to clean) and then discard the towel. Because the towel is not used by others, there is little risk of spreading germs from using another""s towel.
The machine can be used, for example, in the service industry as a convenient and efficient way for dispensing towels to be provided to patrons to be used as a more effective way for cleaning their hands and faces or even the table they are sitting at.
The present invention is also directed to a method for dispensing such towels.